This relates to text-based communication devices. The proliferation of computers and compact portable devices has led to vast amounts of text-based communication. One problem with text-based communications is that there is no way to monitor and control text communications to make them user appropriate. For example, users such as children may send or receive messages (intentionally or not) with parentally objectionable language. Also, because electronic text-based messaging often can be informal, some users may draft messages that are grammatically incorrect.
One way in which parental control can be accomplished is to limit the access points that a user can have. For example, a parent could prevent a child user from accessing specific websites, or limit the user to communicating electronically with a limited set of individuals or e-mail addresses. Such solutions, however, still do not address the content of the communications that the child user has with the permitted communicators.
One way that systems can be used to attempt to control the content that a user can view is to pass all of the communications through a dictionary which prevents a given set of words from being communicated. For example, many such dictionaries, if selected, typically prevent the user from sending or receiving curse words. One problem with this potential solution is that the dictionaries are often fixed. Another potential problem with such dictionaries is that they do not have the ability to prevent the use of non-standard forms of words from being communicated, such as those types of words that are often communicated via text messaging (such as, for example, text messaging “LOL” instead of typing out the full text of “lots of luck”).